Sitting here replaying everything that has happened. The sharing of our hearts, the laughs we erupted, the inside jokes we formed and who could forget about the amazing sex? What’s worse about losing someone you love? I don’t mean, “losing” them as in death but losing them because they no longer want to be with you?

What happens when the person you love makes a conscious decision to leave the relationship and at the same time leave you with the pieces of your broken heart or in my case, soul. The first 24 hours, wait who am I kidding the first 48, are the worst. It’s the worst because you’re still processing what has happened and replaying over and over again why. You may be trying to minimize it initially or you may have a full-scale panic attack (I quite fancy the latter). Once you process the feelings to yourself and share with a few friends reality sets in. What now?

Who am I? How do I pick up the pieces from yet another failed relationship? How do I go on? I’m here to tell ...

Like a lot of people, I suppose, I'm spending a lot of time right now watching the Olympics. I can't even explain it, as I'm not much of a sports fan in the first place, and I'll find myself riveted by, say, competitive kayaking, which is something I've never even heard of before. (I had no idea you could basically run a slalom course through rapids in a kayak. Couch potato me always assumed that if you took a trip in a kayak and didn't drown, you won!) But the Olympics pull me in every time, despite my normally "meh" attitude towards most sports.

Maybe it goes back to the "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" commercials from my youth (am I dating myself with that...?), and the thrill of knowing you're watching the best of the best, the biggest contest there is. Maybe some of it is that I've been watching Olympic ice skating for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that my own ice skating was limited to the zombie-shuffle, run-into-something-solid-to-stop variety. Maybe it's simply the vicarious thrill of watching people ...

My dad gives me crap about my weight and how unpretty I am all the time. For the record, I am 5'2'', 103 lbs (naturally, no eating disorders here), and have been called "stunningly beautiful" and "fairy-like" by my mom's friends.
In a month, I'm heading off to college in New York and my dad keeps teasing me in front of the entire family. He says I'm going to come back 50 lbs heavier and looking like a whale, and that it's simply a fact.
I also mentioned that a friend of mine auditioned to play a Disney Princess. His response? "She looks more like Ursula." This is one of my best friends. He keeps saying that she's "chunky" and needs to get a nose job. At the same time, he blatantly tells me that he thinks my tall, beautiful, stick-thin friend is one of the sexiest people he has ever met. This kinda language lead to my younger sister's anorexia earlier this year.
I've tried talking to him about it, but he won't stop. I'm terrified that he ...

Nobody (no body) is perfect...that's a radical thought. You may "know" it already, but do you really KNOW it? And if not, it's time to ask yourself the following: In what universe does Hannah Montana know something I don't??? {end story}

A man crossed the street in front of my car yesterday. Since I was hiding behind my windshield, I had a rare opportunity to stare at him without the possibility of awkward accidental eye contact. He had what some call a FUPA, or Fat Upper Pussy/Penis Area. It was as if he had a monster truck tire strapped into his underwear, and he had to hobble across the street with a cane in order to carry all that extra weight. I stared without shame and followed his body from the very bottom of his ankles up. And at the top, I saw his face (Obviously. If his face weren’t there, I would have screamed). His huge bottom lip sagged down as if it were pulled by the extra weight of his FUPA. His mouth hung open, surely sloshing fellow pedestrians with uncontrollable drool.

I wanted to run out of my car and talk to this man. I wanted to know what it’s like to grow up with such a FUPA and such an uncontrollable ...

I think I'm over what happened last year. But then I watch 500 Days of Summer or Something Borrowed my heart is ripped afresh. Because I always loved you, even when you were awful to me. You pretended not to notice, but you did, and you used it to manipulate me. But that feeling of going unnoticed, uncared about, it still resonates inside of me, and it still hurts. I have not even been kissed in 18 months. Well, platonically, I have, but not as anything more. And I think it's because that fear still lives inside of me, a fear that you were the only person ever capable of loving me, even though you didn't. {end story}

Have you ever thought that there was just 1 person for you? Just 1? Any advice for our writer? Remember, sharing your story can help change hers.

For anyone who's been a regular visitor to FeelMoreBetter, our feelings about Seventeen and Ann Shoket are pretty well established. In a nutshell, we think Seventeen is the devil, and that Ann poses as an advocate for girls when she's really an advocate for advertisers. Not that there's anything wrong with that ~ unless you think there is, of course, and unless you pretend otherwise.

As we've said before, we hear Ann's nice. And her job is to do what she does, which is support an advertising driven business. Whatever pays the bills, right? And as for Seventeen, we know there are a lot of women and girls who've grown up with it and love it, and are none the worse for it. So why "the devil"? Because of their duplicity. Because they pretend to be something we don't think they are. Because they (and she) pretend to be "healthy media" when they perpetuate body-and self-dissastisfaction in word and deed. It's not just about their images. The images we're shown are as much about what we the people want to see and what causes ...

I think everyone has at least one friend or relative who plays Buddha. You know what I mean---we all know someone who seems to be in a perpetual state of Zen and acceptance no matter what. And just to be clear, I am not that person. I am never that person. Me, I tend more towards Chicken Little. While the calmer folks are busy "what will be, will be"ing, I'm screaming about the sky falling. Acceptance is not, shall we say, my forte. Never has been.

It's a funny thing about getting older and gaining perspective, though. The older I get, the more things I survive, the more some of those trite sayings that used to make me want to punch people in the face start feeling... true. My latest favorite is, "Everything works out okay in the end. If it isn't okay, it isn't the end." But there's also...
... everything that came before brought me to right here.
... there's a reason for everything, whether we know it or not.
... things have a way of working out.
etc.

I was in an abusive relationship for four years and it's taken me another four to deal with it after all the denial. I've been with my partner for almost three years and he really helped me come to terms with what happened.

It's been a relief to deal with it, but now I feel like I can't mention it to him, or else it means I'm not over it. I'm having a really hard time setting sexual boundaries with him because of it and some innocent things will make me feel terrible - but I can't tell him. This is just so stupid. How do I say I'm over it while still asserting myself as a survivor??? {end story}

You ever make one decision only to worry that the decision you made has consequences you hadn't necessarily considered to start? She has and here's her story:

"Don’t even get me started on fears concerning my ability to conceive! I was on the pill for 11 years straight before finally deciding to stop opening that little pink pack on a daily basis, and I’ ve read one too many articles about the effects of birth control on one's body. I’ m not ready to have a kid yet, but I worry all the time about whether or not I will be able to do it when I am." {end story}

Control's a funny thing. Sometimes we think we have it only to find out maybe we don't have quite as much as we'd thought - or hoped. Are there things-which-you-cannot-control that are stressing you out? Why? #discuss.

Yesterday, after enjoying a lovely cup of tea with some friends, an elderly man who had been at the restaurant since before we got there interrupted us to ask, "So when are you due?" Needless to say (or, I suppose, not so needless), I'm NOT pregnant.

I quickly signed my receipt and stormed out before the other patrons could see my face flush red. When I got home I dropped my purse, tore off my shoes and started weeping into my fiance's arms. I'm trying so hard to lose weight for our wedding...and for my health and my life...and it seems like in every candid photo, every walk by a mirror, I seem to have gained weight. What's worse, with every word of comfort my fiance tried to say, a louder voice in my head made a counterpoint in middle-school-mean-girl fashion. When I tried to tell my fiance about the voice, he said, "Tell it it can't stay. No one is allowed in this bed but you and me."

And the voice chimed in with, "Only because no one else could fit." {end ...